Author Archives: Ghoussoub

iSad: Branding humour and its dark side

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Ghoussoub

If you are not yet aware, Steve Jobs has died. Under his tight grip, the Apple brand and its derivatives became an integral part of modern culture. Inevitably, his appearances and statements were often diverted and distorted. His death is no … Continue reading →

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A tale of two subcultures: The UBC Bookstore vs. “UBC Central”

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Ghoussoub

August is supposed to be a slow month for activism on campus. Not this year. Emails started popping up on my screen about a recently announced decision of the UBC administration to rebrand the Bookstore. It was to be named  … Continue reading →

Posted in Board of Governors | 2 Comments

The future of UBC could be determined by … Housing

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Ghoussoub

Providing faculty housing is partly how Stanford grew from nowhere in 1960 to elite in 1980. Columbia’s renaissance in the 1980′s as one of the top Ivy league institutions has been credited to opportunistic housing purchases around campus which allowed the … Continue reading →

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When credit is due

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Ghoussoub

Last week, UBC inaugurated its new Law building. So what? You may say. What’s the big deal about yet another building in UBC’s amazing journey of development and renewal? Well, to me, the story behind the completion of this major … Continue reading →

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UK mathematicians unload on intransigent patronizing bureaucracy

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Ghoussoub

One month after more than 100 academics, including six Nobel laureates, wrote to the British prime minister to complain about cuts to chemistry by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), today’s Guardian reports that the mathematicians of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds | 4 Comments

Mathematical modeling of a bureaucrat’s song and dance

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Ghoussoub

A few hours after our last post was up, NSERC produced a reply to the letter of the chair of the Math/NSERC Liaison committee regarding term limits. All what I can say for now,  is that if the staffer had … Continue reading →

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Term limits and the integrity of the peer review process

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Ghoussoub

Not long after the most controversial Discovery grant competition ever –at least for the Evaluation Group for Mathematics and Statistics (EG 1508)– NSERC announced that 3 out of the 4 members of that EG Executive –who were at the center … Continue reading →

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Running for the Board of Trustees of the American Math Society

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Ghoussoub

An old friend of mine (and a superb analyst/probabilist/mathematical biologist & geneticist) e-mailed me last January. “I am sitting here in the meeting of the nominating committee at the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The committee hopes that you will consider … Continue reading →

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How do we see each other

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Ghoussoub

Viewed so far by 153,373 people, retweeted 2302 times, this creation by PhD student, Matushiq Sotak, became an overnight sensation when it appeared about a month ago. I have asked him if he can make a new grid on how … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Restoring sanity!

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Ghoussoub

Do you remember last year’s Washington, D.C.’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? Well, here is a banner from the march, that was held high by an obviously concerned, though non-identifiable, Ottawa bureaucrat.

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R&D expert panel: All eyes are on Naylor!

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Ghoussoub

No wonder Indira Samarasekera had stressed in her submission to the R&D panel, that NSERC should “distinguish its funding of solution-driven research from basic discovery research.”  The President of the University of Alberta must know a thing or two about the fate … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds, R&D Policy | 1 Comment

Much to learn from the chemists … of the UK

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Ghoussoub

“… the attitude that professional administrators with little scientific knowledge can arbitrarily decide the fate of UK science is arrogant, contemptuous of the scientific community and just wrong.”  A storm is indeed brewing in the scientific circles of the UK against … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds, R&D Policy | 1 Comment

“CREATE”, Command and Control

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Ghoussoub

NSERC Communications replied to our guest blogger Karel Casteels, about his post regarding the dwindling numbers of  graduate and postgraduate fellowships (CGS and PGS and PDFs). Cutting through the maze of budgetary reporting, the key to the story lies in the following NSERC statement: … Continue reading →

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Au revoir, Le Bon Jack, si bien, si gentil

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Ghoussoub

Very sad news this morning. Canada lost a good politician, Jack Layton, a decent and likable man with a great heart, who has been able to transcend the bitterness that politics seems to breed. His untimely death is so damn unfair! Here … Continue reading →

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“Keeping a single rioter in jail is equivalent to what? Two postdocs?”

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Ghoussoub

Here is a very recent exchange between two UK mathematicians. It hit so close to home –riots and all, Hockey or not– that I couldn’t resist! The subject was the recent acts of “dirigisme” at the UK’s “Engineering and Physical Sciences … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Google celebrates Fermat’s 410th birthday

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Ghoussoub

Google.ca offered in: français

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Karel Casteels: NSERC’s numbers on PDFs don’t add up!

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Ghoussoub

“Apres moi le deluge?”. Not so for Governor General’s Gold Medalist Scholar, Karel Casteels, who was the one who alerted us to the dramatic drop in NSERC’s graduate and postgraduate fellowships. He wrote then:  “I recently finished my own PhD. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds, R&D Policy | 4 Comments

Dirigisme: Research prioritization and funds reallocation … by staff

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Ghoussoub

Last December, during a lively public debate with Isabelle Blain, NSERC’s Vice-President for Research Grants & Scholarships, my colleague Martin tried to bring a positive note to the conversation by stating that at least NSERC’s new ways are not as bad … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds, R&D Policy | 5 Comments

The decline in Discovery Grants budgets also begs for an explanation

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Ghoussoub

Encouraged by NSERC’s response to explain the reasons behind the drop in the numbers of their graduate scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships, we decided to push our luck and inquire for the reasons behind the substantial decline  in the budgets of almost … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds, R&D Policy | 6 Comments

NSERC explains the drop in 2011 CGS, PGS and PDF numbers

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Ghoussoub

In response to our last blog post, “Piece of Mind” received the following memo from NSERC communications. NSERC offered fewer CGS-PGS awards in 2011 for two reasons: First, the Government of Canada’s Economic Action Plan (EAP) came to an end, … Continue reading →

Posted in R&D Policy | 7 Comments